Agriculture demands more water than any other process in the world and is related to 90% of water use in India. India irrigates nearly half of all its cultivated land, while groundwater resources are being depleted at a rate that is threatening the endurance of India’s agricultural economy.

Milk adulteration is a very common practice in the field of dairy production in certain countries, where different methods are used to adulterate milk. Such methods vary in their sophistication from simply adding water to using different chemicals such as urea and melamine, which usually countervail the effects of adding water on indices used to measure certain characteristics (e.g., lowering freezing point, or mimicking protein content) of milk like freezing point value and protein content to detect the addition of water.

Almost half of the world’s population cooks with highly polluting stoves and household air pollution (HAP) is one of the leading environmental risks for global health. Current efforts to reduce HAP have focused on improved cook stove and/or fuel interventions. However, most previous stove interventions failed to achieve reductions in air pollution exposures due to a combination of technological, affordability, and behavioural problems.

Cognitive scientists typically divide cognition between controlled and automatic processes. This framework construes controlled processes as being voluntary and effortful and automatic processes as involuntarily and effortless. Automatic processes are therefore considered outside the scope of voluntary control. Undermining this notion, studies show that hypnosis – an enhanced form of mental absorption and self-regulation – can actually suppress automatic response. Hypnosis therefore provides a mean to alter mental processes that appear immune to cognitive control.

In most commonly studied languages, the subjects of all sentences are marked the same way. In some less commonly studied languages including Nepali, however, subjects of transitive verbs are treated as subjects, while subjects of intransitive verbs are marked the same way as objects of transitive verbs. These are called “ergative” languages. If we imagine that English were an ergative language, the following pair of sentences would be grammatical:
“She saw him.”
“Him slept.” (rather than “He slept”).

The focus of this project is to explore how livelihoods are affected when changes in ecosystem services within the Miyun watershed occur. Rural households depend on ecosystem services that the landscape provides for their livelihoods. If the availability of these resources were to change, a person’s livelihood may become more vulnerable. Determining possible ecosystem service changes will be performed by scenario building stakeholder workshops. The stakeholders involved in the Miyun watershed include environmental management officials, urban residents and rural residents.

Urban agriculture using hydroponic systems is gaining increasing popularity. However, popular organic (ground coconut husks, clay pellets) and inorganic (rockwool) rooting matrices used in supporting the plant root structure during the growth cycle are facing considerable challenges. Rockwool is non-biodegradable, produces dust in enclosed spaces and has a high pH thereby requiring pre-treatment before use. On the other hand, organic rooting matrices either retain too much water (drowning the plants) or drain too quickly (drying out the roots).

Historically, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – also referred to as remotely piloted aircraft or drones – have most commonly been associated with military applications. In recent years, however, there has been a shift in interest towards civilian applications and a corresponding increase in research and development in this area. UAVs typically fall into two categories: fixedwing and rotorcraft. Fixed-wing aircraft – such as airplanes – generate lift by moving forward and creating airflow over their wings. Rotorcraft – such as helicopters – achieve their lift from rotating blades.